Queena Kim/The Bay Citizen

With its sprawling encampment gone, Occupy Oakland has set its sights on a new goal: shutting down ports along the West Coast.

Organizers say they hope their planned blockade on Monday will help secure union representation for more port workers. Leaders of the International Longshore and Workers Union, however, say they could do without the help.

“It’s presumptuous of them to say they’re shutting down our port in solidarity with us,” said Richard Mead, president of the Bay Area local ILWU affiliate, during an interview in his hiring hall office.

Two dozen rank-and-file longshoremen interviewed this week offered mixed views of the plan, with workers upset about the protest outnumbering supporters about three to one.

“It’s bizarre for one group of people to announce what’s best for 20,000 workers without having any conversations, and without respecting our union’s decision making process,” said Craig Merrilees, a spokesman for the International Longshore and Workers Union.

In a letter Wednesday to local chapters, ILWU President Robert McEllrath accused the Occupy movement of meddling.

"Support is one thing, organization from outside groups attempting to co-opt our struggle in order to advance a broader agenda is quite another," McEllrath's letter stated.

But Occupy organizers say the action will take their protest in a proactive new direction.

“What this movement is about is that it’s helping working people,” said Mike King, 32, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He’s among a group of three dozen people who have been meeting in downtown Oakland every evening and distributing flyers about the event.

At first glance, the Occupy movement and labor unions might seem made for each other. Unions have a long history of forming alliances with non-union groups to further their goals. 

Labor unions such as the ILWU and the Service Employees International Union have for years sought to turn income inequality and corporate influence over politics into popular causes. They largely failed — until the Occupy Movement put these topics on the nightly news and into millions of Twitter streams.

Occupy, meanwhile, has benefitted from unions’ manpower, organizational might and mainstream legitimacy. Thousands of members of dozens of unions participated in a massive protest Nov. 2 that shut down the Port of Oakland in response to the eviction of the Occupy Oakland encampment. (The shutdown cost the Port hundreds of thousands of dollars and delayed shipping traffic.)